


masochism tango

by rhllors



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Mentioned Cannibalism, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhllors/pseuds/rhllors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meek do not inherit the earth. Instead, they are swallowed and devoured whole by the dangerous beasts who lurk in the darkness, or perhaps, more terrifyingly, by the beasts who do not hide their true nature, who <i>glory</i> in the light of their own darkness.</p><p>(How equilibrium is reached.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	masochism tango

**Author's Note:**

  * For [postcardmystery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/gifts).



> set in show universe, so the events of _silence of the lambs_ do not happen in 1980. completely disregards hannibal (the film), oops.
> 
> i will show you fear in a handful of dust.  
> \- t.s. eliot, the hollow men

These are the things Hannibal Lecter has learned:

1\. The meek do not inherit the earth. Instead, they are swallowed and devoured whole by the dangerous beasts who lurk in the darkness, or perhaps, more terrifyingly, by the beasts who do not hide their true nature, who _glory_ in the light of their own darkness.

2\. The truth is never pure and rarely simple. Anyone who speaks otherwise is either a fool or a manipulator--the dangerous ones are both.

3\. God likes killing. He does it all the time, in all His glory and wisdom.

 

 

 

The moment after Hannibal Lecter hangs up on her, Clarice Starling gets another phone call, from her cell this time. She stares at the unmarked number for a beat, before clicking through.

“I saw on the news,” says the gravelly tone of Will Graham, the best profiler the Bureau ever had, and the person they fucked up the most too. “Hannibal the Cannibal escapes,” he sounds like he hasn’t said anything out loud in a long time. Clarice Starling knows the legend of Graham--he’s a spectre, a case example for them all: get too close, and you get fucked, over and up.

His face looks like a Francis Bacon painting.

 _Of course_ , she knows, _of course Will Graham knows what she feels like right now_.

 

 

 

 

Will works out who the Chesapeake Ripper is a on cold Monday morning.

“Self-immolation.” says Jack, inspecting the pile of ash and a few bones that survived the onslaught of a body doused in petrol and lit aflame. Beverly raises her eyebrows and pulls a face which says more inappropriate words than someone could say in a lifetime and someone else wonders why they’re even here, because the obvious suicide is, uh, _obvious_. One by one, eyes wonder to Will Graham, who has got his murder face on--the office betting pool says his face his exactly the same when he orgasms--and they watch closely, from a distance, as his face twists more than usual.

He looks like he’s in pain, fists clasped so tightly his knuckles have turned white, bones pulsating just below the skin.

Suddenly, he throws up. It’s like a projectile vomit and everyone recoils in shock--someone moves forward, but Jack gesticulates something that looks like violent death, so they just stand and watch, and wait for him to resurface.

Will comes back, and he’s muttering, muttering, muttering.

“Something you ate?” Beverly jokes, and Will goes green again, but swallows it back, his lips moving so fast but no sound comes out. He looks like a man who has just experienced a life changing epiphany. _God must like killing too_ , he murmurs, and her eyebrows make a break for her hairline, _he does it all the time_. Eyes screwed shut, the words become nothing more than a chorus of _fuck, fuck, fuck_ ; he looks torn between laughing and crying, and pays no heed to them, walking towards his car without a second glance at the puddle of sick that is technically contaminating their crime scene.

(Later, they kick through the door into Lecter’s office and find Will on the floor, laying in a puddle of his own rapidly expanding blood, Mozart’s Requiem - Lacrimosa blasting through the speakers. Lecter is holding him, a bullet hole in his leg, those strong arms wrapped his shoulders, a parody of a lover's embrace.

The Paramedics say in court that Graham was delusional from lack of blood in the ambulance, twisting and turning, claiming that Garret Jacob Hobbs was watching him, Abel Gideon was watching him, repeating the same thing over and over again; _he was feeding them to us, feeding them us, I could smell it, God must like killing too, jesus fucking christ_.)

 

 

 

 

After spending days touring the Palazzo Vecchio, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Galleria degli Uffizi and the other delights of Florence, Will and Clarice fall into bed with each other.

(Fall is the wrong word. Neither is sure what the right word would be, however.)

After, they sit in the rumpled sheets and think of the spectre who slinks around the room like a snake crawling around the house. Will can taste something bitter on his tongue, and he can’t quite yet identify what it is. They don’t look at one another, and Clarice rolls out of bed, fishing out a packet of very low quality cigarettes from her handbag--it’s a habit she picked up after leaving Quantico, and it clears her head almost as well as holding a gun does.

Unconsciously, Will scrapes his hand against the sheets, enjoying the sensation of something so obviously expensive soiled by sweat and semen. Every now and again, someone’s got to ruin something beautiful, just to feel alive.

(Maybe Alana used to find him handsome, when his face didn't look melted wax. Some people who have watched them together, meandering through the streets of the city that doesn't belong to them have stared--that pretty young lady, all red hair and American manners, accompanied by a man who looks like a freak show. Clarice doesn't give a shit, plain and simple. That’s why he likes her, unperturbed by anything and everything.)

Clarice is tapping ash into the sofa, expensive italian leather cold against her naked thighs.

They know they don’t belong here, because Clarice Starling is trailer trash, pure and simple, and Will Graham is made of Tennessee, on the wrong side of wild.

Will realises, later, that the bitter taste on his tongue is blood, his eyes finding the two crescent moons which look like a brand of Clarice’s shoulder. He wipes his hand against his mouth, smearing his skin with a sheen of red.

His wrists are covered with her marks, her cigarette filter tipped with a matching red. 

 

 

 

 

Will Graham recovers from his stab wound, but remains long in the ICU because the doctors say he has Encephalitis.

After he is released from hospital, brain back to normal, his gut no longer a gaping wound, everyone thinks that he might be cured--he is told that Lecter fucked with his head, psychic driving, that he is going to be fine and the bad guy won't get out.

Wrong on every count. His gut will always be a gaping wound, his brain will never be normal. Hannibal never created thoughts in his mind, simply fed them.

 _I am insane_ , he thinks, _Hannibal Lecter will escape from prison, and nothing is ever going to be fine again_.

(It was never fine in the first place. Hannibal Lecter is the Franz Ferdinand of Will’s Great War; the catalyst, the one history will blame, but he knows that this has been brewing for years.

Death becomes him.)

 

 

 

 

“Do you ever think about him?” Will asks one dusky evening--they’re out late, even for Italians, the last in the restaurant, apart from a bustling family who are enjoy several bottles of the local red, little children chatting excitedly, jabbering away to their parents.

(Will had a family once. A wife, adoptive son. Before that, another family, of sorts.

Will has a bad track record with families.)

Clarice considers her words very carefully, her red hair glinting in the candlelight. “He slips into my thoughts,” is the answer she settles with and it feels very apt, because it is true. Unbidden, unannounced, Hannibal Lecter has crawled into their consciousness.

They eat in silence--they do much in silence; admire paintings, wander the streets, hands brushing against each other, but they fuck noisily, harshly; the slap of skin on skin, mouth on mouth, teeth in flesh, and it feels like they’re praying--but it’s a comfortable silence, a familiarity now that doesn't need words. Suddenly, and without warning, Will starts to laugh. His entire body quakes with some hilarity that sounds so pained that some of the children on the other table stop and stare, tugging on their mother’s skirts with wide eyes.

Will looks at Clarice, and she starts to laugh too. They must look mad, but it does not worry them. Both know their own insanity.

A waiter approaches, tall and broad, hands the size of dinner plates, silently collecting the dishes from the _pazzo americani_. He smiles at Clarice, full of teeth.

She drops her wine glass on the floor with a smash, glass exploding across the cobblestoned floor, a single tear of laughter dribbling down her cheek, laughter gone from her mouth as she stares and stares and stares.

“Folie à deux?” asks Hannibal Lecter, “Or, indeed, trois.”

 

 

 

 

Clarice Starling sometimes feels like there’s a beast beneath her skin.

(If she ever spoke to a psychologist, they might mention the irony of the Buffalo Bill’s obsession with what lay beneath the skin, but Clarice Starling hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting one since the last one wore a human face as a mask.)

She stands under the shower in Florence, and scrubs her skin until it’s pink and raw. She clicks and stretches her neck, stiffening the sinews, fingernails raking down her face; not to scratch, not to harm, but simply so she can feel the blood pumping beneath. Clarice feels like she could shed her skin, ever the snake, and be reborn as something harder, more dangerous, stronger. She trained hard at Quantico, running, always running, working towards that ultimate pinnacle, _Special Agent Starling_.

Now, she’s running in a different direction, hurtling towards _him_ , who has taken root in her mind like a snare of poison ivy, twisting and turning, breaking and remaking. She doesn’t hear the lambs scream, not anymore. Clarice has metamorphosed, remade by Hannibal Lecter.

(Will understands this, better than most. That’s why she likes him--he leaves unsaid things unsaid, because sometimes the lion in the room is so frighteningly visible that neither needs to acknowledge it.)

 

 

 

 

After he kills Garret Jacob Hobbs, Hannibal Lecter watches Will Graham with interest. The Mongoose, indeed.

After Clarice Starling tricks him with promises of an island, Hannibal Lecter clucks his tongue. _Oh dear Jack_ , he thinks, pencil sliding across questionnaire, _your third offering to me._

 

 

 

 

After, after, after--Clarice doesn’t smoke and Will doesn’t stare. Instead Clarice puts her hand over Will’s heart, feels it _thump, thump, thump_. Hannibal licks a bite on her neck clean. It’s almost funny how natural this feels, a tangle of legs and arms, sweat seeped into the sheets and a pile of limbs, red in tooth and claw.

(How they get there goes thusly: Clarice ducks down to pick up the shattered glass, knocking Will’s knees with her elbows, before picking up every shard, clenching her fist so they cut a thousand slices into her flesh. She straightens, brushing them onto his tray, two sets of eyes keenly watching the bloody glass drop. Hannibal nods politely, and subtly pockets a particularly bloody piece, sliding it into his waiter’s pocket.

He follows them back to their room, of course, and runs the glass across Will’s lips, before replacing it with his own mouth. A lot of salvia is shared, before salvia becomes other things.)

Equilibrium, in its rawest form.

**Author's Note:**

> couldn't have written this without a few people. postcard, mainly because all we did for the first ten weeks of this shows run was scream at each other about it, swearing profusely and staying up until inappropriate times of the morning shouting about it. ella, for proof-reading and helping me plot it through, advising on hannibal lecter's matchmaking & teleporting skills. everyone on twitter, for putting up with a lot of ajdakdjfhjksdf and marriage proposals to mads mikkelsen.


End file.
